Two Wisconsin otters owned and trained by Tom and Mabel Beecham of Phillips, Wisconsin [4] portrayed Mij the otter.

I think Maxwell’s Ghost (Gollancz, 1976, and reprinted by Birlinn, 2011) gives a good insight into Gavin Maxwell’s character. It was written by Richard Frere who, after working for Maxwell as a builder on the lighthouse properties, became Maxwell’s business manager. He cleared up the mess. It is a good book, and as honest as any… Award Winners". National Board of Review. New York City. Archived from the original on 16 December 2013 . Retrieved 24 June 2014. I wanted to read this after having a go at Miriam Darlington’s Otter Country, which in many ways revolved around this book and the landscape described by Gavin Maxwell. He got much closer to the animals than Darlington, so perhaps it’s not surprising that his account is more interesting and vital. Otters were, not quite pets, but definitely companions for him, in a way that Darlington had no opportunity to understand.

Open Library

Gavin Maxwell was a Scottish naturalist and author, best known for his work with otters. He was born in Scotland in 1914 to Lieutenant-Colonel Aymer Maxwell and Lady Mary Percy, whose father was the seventh Duke of Northumberland. He was raised in the small village of Elrig, near Port William, which he later described in his autobiography The House of Elrig (1965). Now, as it did then, it fills me with a sense of freedom and the deepest empathy for the wildlife, a yearning for nature. But the intervening thirty five years have also given me a new way to interpret Maxwell’s acutely discerning opus. No obstante, la obra no está exenta de lagunas, o más bien, incoherencias personales en lo referente a la vida previa de éste Escocés en las islas salvajes, pero es muy perdonable, pues el ser humano en sí es contradictorio. To me there is always something a little stifling in this enveloping green stain, this redundant, almost Victorian drapery over bones that need no blanketing, and were it not for the astringent presence of the sea I should find all that verdure as enervating as an Oxford water-meadow in the depths of summer. Perhaps ‘depraved’ is the right word after all’.

Hastings, Chris (11 September 2005). "The dark love behind A Ring of Bright Water". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 28 May 2014. Kathleen Raine, ‘In Answer to a Letter Asking Me for Volumes of My Early Poems,’ from The Lost Country (1971) Overall, Maxwell comes across as charming, eccentric and his appreciation of animals and birds is obvious. There can be various criticisms levelled at him for his attempts at domesticating wild animals, but I believe Maxwell was leading change in animal welfare and treatment, and it is unreasonable to judge him in recent terms. He writes incredibly well in describing the landscapes, flora and fauna and he delights in sharing it in his writing. To describe this book in one word I would use charming. Austerity Britain has nothing on the austerity, drabness and general greyness of post-war Britain. We, along with our allies (especially the USA), may have won the war, but it was bad in Britain – always raining in the bombed-out city centres, where drudges dressed in demob suits trudged through puddles to and from their bedbug-infested tenements along broken pavements to work at tedious, meaningless office jobs for 18 hours a day (if we are to believe the social history writers and/or George Orwell).But in 1956 after one of several bitter quarrels, bereft at what she believed was Gavin’s rejection of her love and all they had shared, Raine uttered a ‘heart’s cry’ at the Sandaig rowan tree. ‘Let Gavin suffer, in this place, as I am suffering.’ [6] Mij died almost a year later, clubbed by a local villager after escaping while in Raine’s care, and she blamed herself mercilessly for the tragedy. Amongst the otter stories, Maxwell shares more of his own thoughts, and his other numerous animal adoptions, including a lemur, a bushbaby, 4 geese, and a wildcat! Maxwell takes such a delight in the landscape and the antics of the creatures within it, both the wild ones and those he tamed or half-tamed, that it’s impossible not to enjoy this, for me. He wasn’t ashamed of his love for the animals, and sometimes that just shines through so clearly. Finally I got to this first book, not really knowing what to expect, other than the short crossover in A Reed... where he obtains his first otter cub. There are a few spoilers below, so if you are put off by these, then perhaps curtail your reading now... This was one of my favorite books as a middle-grader - thereafter when my parents asked what I wanted for my birthday, it was always the same: an otter. (Nope. That never happened.)